Baffled by Christian Critics of “Boyhood”

A top contender for the 2014 Oscar for Best Picture, Boyhoodwasfilmed over a twelve-year period by director Richard Linklater. The film recollects the life of a boy from age 6 to 18, growing up in the director’s home state of Texas.

Ellar Coltrane plays Mason, the film’s central character; Lorelie Linklater, his sister Samantha; and Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, Mason’s parents. Linklater, also the film’s screen writer, has said his approach was collaborative, drawing on his and his actors’ childhoods, especially for the young Ellar Coltrane, who literally grew up during the process of filming.

Boyhood is a magical, entrancing film, but for Christians it should be required viewing for a serious reason: to understand why so many young people in our culture are so wounded, and so, so lost. Who doesn’t belong to or know a broken family like Mason’s — divorced parents who love their kids, but who are incapable of providing them with stability and discipline, much less with the moral compass created by religious conviction.

In Boyhood, the mom raises the kids, while marrying and divorcing two more husbands, both abusive alcoholics. She struggles and succeeds in becoming a college teacher and is able to provide for her children, who are uprooted by several moves. Their dad, driving a GTO, occasionally pops up on weekends. While becoming a more regular part of his kids’ lives, he eventually remarries, settles into an insurance job, has another child and buys a minivan.

Whether intended or not, the achievement of Boyhood is its portrayal of spiritual poverty and its consequences for many of our children. Boyhood captures all the textures and tones of parental failure as well as the emotional displacement, dissonance, and confusion Mason and his sister experience, but without the exculpatory clichés of many TV shows and movies.

Unlike the TV series Parenthood, in its final season on NBC, Boyhood is not allergic to religion. Linklater, a self-identified “Southerner” from East Texas, seems sympathetic to guns and religion, presenting Mason’s world with understanding and without condescension. Even if not part of Mason’s life, church-going is portrayed sincerely. Even more remarkably, there’s no directorial editorializing when Mason receives both a Bible and a gun from his stepmother’s parents.

I’m baffled by the Christian reviewers who sniff at the film’s lack of “morality” in its discrete presentation of Mason’s high school discoveries of pornography, alcohol, marijuana, and sex. As if Christian parents can just circle their wagons and magically shield their children from a toxic culture. As someone who raised a son, I know all about that battle. (On this point, I agree with Barbara Nicolosi in her previous review of Boyhoodin The Christian Review.)

Mason, like most young people, hungers for the meaning of life, posed as the closing question of the film. Mason’s father doesn’t know the answer and claims, “neither does anyone else . . . We’re all just winging it . . . . The good news is you’re feeling stuff. And you’ve got to hold on to that.”

Some of these same critics mistakenly condemn Mason’s predictable espousal of his father’s carpe diem philosophy of life in the movie’s last scene as the defining interpretation of Boyhood.

But in this case, the medium is the message: Mason’s statement is that of an 18-year-old boy on the brink of manhood. That’s all. Time and Mason will move on.

As we all know, too many kids grow up like Mason. According to the Pew Foundation only 46% of children under 18 now live in a traditional family of a man and woman who’ve been married only once. A psychotherapist friend says that adolescence can now extend into one’s mid-30’s. This makes the need for the Gospel greater than ever, particularly among teenagers and young adults.

Christians, I think, should pay attention to Boyhood; otherwise the Masons of this world may wander away misunderstood. We have the responsibility of knowing what’s going on in the world. Boyhood can help us recognize the wounded among us: how misled, confused, and cynical they are and how badly they need the grace that can heal all wounds.

About The Author

Mary Margaret Freeman is writing a series of articles on learning, literacy, and digital media issues for TheChristianReview.com. She is researching a biography of the late Christian musician and singer, Rich Mullins. She makes her home in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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8 Comments

Brit Stryn
on January 4, 2015 at 12:10 am

What is troubling about this film, as a parent, is exactly what is presented in this review; namely, it’s “presentation of… discoveries of pornography, alcohol, marijuana, and sex.” A lot of parents will have none of this and this is our right and this point of view is reasonable. It is uncertain that this film has a solid moral context, by which to present these immoral things in a way which is good for kids. In order to portray these immoral things in art, a director and writer (and all those involved in the making of the film) need to be very solid in their moral framework as artists, and this depiction of vice needs to be presented in a rock-solid moral context. In this way, Aristotle and other classical critics of drama have said that immoral deeds need to be portrayed in an ethical framework in order to achieve the aim of art which is moral. Hence, Aristotle praises the depiction of the vices of Oedipus (in Oedipus Rex) in a moral context. The effect of this dramatic immitation is good for adult viewers. It is a stretch to say that Aristotle would have prescribed Oedipus for children. Boyhood, on the other hand, does not seem to portray vices in this solid ethical manner. Hence it’s effect is likely immoral. Even if it were, it is reasonable for parents to shield their kids from such a depiction. That, in a nutshell, is the “beef.”

Brit, I am not going to answer for Margaret, or Barbara for that matter, but isn’t it at least debatable whether or not that ethical framework exists in Boyhood? If it didn’t I doubt that so many viewers would be drawing the same moral and spiritual insights from the film. Just a thought….

Yes, for sure, that is debatable. But I think it is very understandable, and not baffling at all, why parents would be concerned about a movie “presentation of… discoveries of pornography, alcohol, marijuana, and sex.”

Even if it were a “rock solid” moral depiction of vice — which is debatable — it is questionable whether this film would stand the “ten foot pole test” that many parents have for their families.

For Christian adults critical of this film, then, for their concern to be unfounded, it would seem that it would be necessary for this film to be an ethical depiction of sex, drugs and pornography. These past two reviews do not seem to make the case that an ethical depiction is intrinsic to this film. In fact, one reader expressed what seemed to be valid concerns that the initial review imposed an ethical view onto something that was not there. So it seems puzzling why the reviewer is “baffled”.

I certainly appreciate Mr. Stryn’s comments and have no disagreement with them.

In my review, I did not address the question of whether or not “Boyhood” is suitable for children or teens. That I advocate the merits of the film does not mean that I would recommend it for everyone. That assumption is a leap.

My answer would be that the appropriate audience for this film is adults. I assume that parents know what’s suitable or not for their children.